


Playing the Part

by Quedarius



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Exploration, Drabble Collection, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, F/M, Hannigram - Freeform, Insanity, M/M, Manipulative Hannibal, Manipulative Will, hannibloom
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-08-05
Packaged: 2018-01-19 22:36:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1486645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quedarius/pseuds/Quedarius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The line between role and reality grows thin. Some of them are trying to see the truth in others, some are losing sight of themselves.</p>
<p>(Drabble collection from multiple perspectives. Heavy Hannigram themes, some Hannibloom as well.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dread Pleasures

With Alana, he was gentle. He could see the fine trace of veins just beneath her skin, could feel her subtle, fluttering pulse and could imagine, with each sharp intake of breath and undone shirt button, a hundred different ways to quiet her heartbeat permanently. 

But he didn’t.

Instead, he lay kisses on those junctures he was tempted to bite, on the neck he wanted to squeeze, and it gave him a dull sort of thrill to know that she had not a clue the kind of danger she was in. Even better was the excitement of knowing that Will, head quietly rotting to madness in a cell, knew exactly how much danger she was in, and could do nothing about it.  


He gave her precisely what she expected of him— gentleness, and just a dash of hesitation. That was how she believed him to be: a reserved, kind man who would worry about taking advantage of a colleague in mourning, and who most certainly was not already dividing her up into pieces in his mind as she slipped out of the last of her clothing. It was a part, like any, and one that he was more than willing to play.

For now.


	2. To Put an Antic Disposition On

He wanted to spread bruises and spill blood beneath his hands. He wanted to taste his own anger in someone else’s coppery fear. Will was full of impulses he didn’t recognize as his own, and plagued by nightmares that didn’t bother him the way they used to. More troublesome was the way that this new blood thirst had come over him: suddenly and easily, as if it was always there. That was what Hannibal wanted him to believe. 

He told himself it was all a part of the act; that sure, he may be getting a little too into character, but it was all planned. Hannibal was the prey this time. If there was ever a glimmer of doubt in his mind about who was in control, it was while he broke Randall Tier beneath his fists. The world had seemed to shift in that moment, and yet when the deed was done and he looked at his work, he was satisfied.

Yes. All part of the plan.


	3. Well-Painted Passion

There was something not right in Hannibal. She didn’t know why it had taken her so long to figure out, but there was an odd stiffness to the way that he held her in bed, a distance between them even when they were pressed close between sheets. There was something held back in each kiss.

At first, she had thought it was sweet. She took his tentative touch as part of his nature. She couldn’t help but do her job, even with a bedfellow (this tendency for psychoanalyzing had ended several poorly-timed relationships in the past) and what she knew about Hannibal was that he was a cautious man, a kind man, a passionate man.

And yet, as weeks passed, he didn’t seem passionate about her. Sure, there was nothing _technically_ wrong with their breathless exchanges, or even the time they spent just cooking and talking. Alana had rarely enjoyed herself more with a partner. But there was something missing: a connection not quite made, as if Hannibal had seen what was expected of someone in a relationship and was grasping at it, just brushing it with his fingertips.

Like it was somehow _constructed_ between them.

And wasn’t it? To be honest, she’d had quite the crush on him in younger days, but he had only ever shown her a cool politeness until…

Until Will.

He had started flirting with her to distract from the matter at hand, and he was doing it still, only now she had fallen into bed with him, as if she was still the idealistic student she’d once been.

She tried to tell herself that she was doing it again: typical Alana Bloom, can’t keep her work out of her private life, overthinking everything. But something still didn’t sit right. She found herself beginning to drift away from him; even when they were together she felt far-away and full of thought. She found herself testing him, pushing him to see how he would respond… and learned nothing.

Somehow, that was the worst part.


	4. Past Reason Hunted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ 129 ](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet_129)

He was perfectly still as Hannibal wrapped his hand, despite the shudder that was trying to work its way up his spine. He only half-listened as Hannibal made subtle allusions to their next step, holding Will’s hand tenderly in his own. Will wanted to pull back, to run somewhere far away where Hannibal and Jack and the ghost of the girl he’d tried to save couldn’t touch him. But there was no peaceful river for him now, for even in the deepest once-safe corners of his mind, the stag watched.

“Stay with me,” Hannibal entreated, smiling at him gently. Will looked up, trying to read the expression that gave Hannibal’s eyes that crinkling, warm look. He knew that Hannibal was lonely inside the sterile little personality he’d constructed, saddened that the world could never know the part of him that he perceived to be his most real self. His words rang true, not just in their current moment where he could invariably tell that Will’s mind was drifting away, but always.

_Stay with me, because the dark is easier to bear if I’m not alone._

It was a sentiment that Will could understand.


	5. The Form of my Intent

It was just the slight narrowing of eyes, shifting of position that gave it away. For Will, that’s all that it took; just the tiniest cue, and his mind would make the jump. They were sitting across from each other, as they so often were, and Will was fighting the feeling that Hannibal had him all figured out before he’d even begun. Hannibal knew they were after him, knew that Will was helping, and he just sat there as calm as ever, smiling a stiff, cold smile, and watching him dance.

In his nervousness, Will licked his lips. And suddenly, there it was—his answer. On anyone else, just the smallest reaction, probably nothing, but with Hannibal every movement spoke volumes, and Will was extremely well-read.

Surely he must be wrong though. There was no way that _Hannibal…_

Testing the waters, Will smiled warmly, changed his own posture to a more relaxed, wide-kneed stance. His voice was lower when he trusted himself to speak again, and he was not disappointed—there it was again, the bobbing of Hannibal’s adam’s apple, the almost imperceptible lean forwards. Victory. Will looked at him, blue eyes meeting usually stoic amber ones glowing with something dark, something dangerous and, at the same time, inviting. Desire burned off Hannibal and Will was suddenly caught up in it too, drowning in fact, in the predatory gaze that Hannibal turned towards him. Flashes of skin and lips and hot, breathy sighs and Hannibal, all of him, man and monster both as one reaching for him with tan arms that were all too human, hands just like Will’s own that slid over skin and tangled in hair, and eyes that held a pain that he had never so much as hinted at, that he shouldn’t be allowed.

Will broke their gaze first, face feeling suddenly hot. He missed the next words out of Hannibal’s mouth, smiling vacantly and hoping that would suffice.

He should have seen it before—had known all along that Lecter wanted a protégé, someone to connect to. Someone he wouldn’t have to hide from. He wanted to be seen for what he truly was and to be celebrated rather than rejected. Will felt an ugly, bitter feeling growing in his stomach; who was better suited to understand a monster than he? There was nobody who knew him better.

He tried his best not to seem like easy prey and hoped that Hannibal would take the bait.


	6. Poison to my Blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *can be read as the immediate sequel to [Act and Figure](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1542977/chapters/3963454)

Will lay tangled in the sheets as Hannibal rose and dressed. He feigned sleep while he tried to figure out how to feel, watching Hannibal’s movements through slit eyelids.

Hannibal strode over to him once he was half-clothed, and for a panicked moment, Will thought he would climb back into bed; but no. He simply reached out and pressed his hand, which felt unbelievably warm, to Will’s cheek. He stayed for just a moment with an unfathomable look on his features, and then he left. Will wondered sourly if he had gone to the kitchen, inspired to cook.

The moment his soft, bare footsteps echoed out of hearing, Will opened his eyes and kicked off the covers, still warm with the memory of their skin. He gasped raggedly, as if he’d just come up from underwater, and for a moment that was all he was able to do.

He felt all used up. It was an odd, old battle between pleasure and guilt—he felt good but sullied, tired but satisfied. Ashamed but made new. The truth was, he didn’t know how to feel. He sat with his arms around his knees in the middle of a very much too big, very much not his own bed until he could stop shaking. Calm at last, he rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, walked to the bathroom and tried to scrub the feeling of Hannibal’s palm from his cheek, the taste of him from his mouth.

The man in the mirror looked blearily back at him, all wild hair and tired eyes.

“What am I doing?” Will asked him, but the man in his reflection looked just as lost as he.


End file.
